Giving away THREE SIGNED COPIES of the new book from Erik Larson: #1 NYT bestselling author and master of suspenseful narrative nonfiction. DEAD WAKE:…more

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Giving away THREE SIGNED COPIES of the new book from Erik Larson: #1 NYT bestselling author and master of suspenseful narrative nonfiction. DEAD WAKE: the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania___________On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
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I knew every fold of skin, every joint and artery. I’d memorized human anatomy on pages in a book, and I felt it beneath my own fingers. My fingers were shaking, but I took a deep breath and tho

I pressed the scalpel to the base of the brain and cut.

I knew every fold of skin, every joint and artery. I’d memorized human anatomy on pages in a book, and I felt it beneath my own fingers. My fingers were shaking, but I took a deep breath and thought of my father’s steady hands, and mine stilled.

Many authors have tried to replicate the classics. Most have failed. No young adult series have done it as successfully and as brilliantly as Megan Shepherd's Madman's Daughter series.

It is so easy to fuck up a classic. It is so difficult to embrace the spirit of a series while maintaining a sense of originality, while maintaining one's own original plot throughout an entire series.

Truly, I applaud Ms. Shepherd. She has done it brilliantly. She did it in the first book, a retelling of The Island of Dr. Moreau. I wasn't even a fan of that book (although the Simpsons remake was pretty fucking awesome), and Shepherd made me love the story. The second encompasses Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was entirely enjoyable.

And now this, the grand finale. Frankenstein. It just happens to be one of my favorite classics of all time, and God help her if Shepherd fucked it up. As anyone knows, my rage burns with the fury of a thousand Kanyes.

She didn't.

I fucking loved this book. It was fantastic. There were moments that made me rage, but it was a good rage. It was the kind of impotent rage on behalf of a character. It was the kind of rage that only a well-written book could inspire. It was indignation inspired by true emotions.

Shepherd is so fucking good. I loved the way she presented the essence of morality that existed within the original. The sense of right and wrong that comes from the question of: who are we to play God? Who are we to mess with the elements of life and death? What are the consequences of such a game?

And is it really, truly evil? Is it so wrong to want to save a loved one from the grasp of death?

I don't know her background, but there's got to be some medical shit going on with Shepherd, because the goriness in the book is fucking spectacular. The blood, the guts, the horror. The details of the surgeries and the death. The smell of decay. The rotting corpses

This month's Goodreader is a top site librarian. (She is hoping to become a librarian IRL, too!) The California resident has so many great ideas for YA classics, new YA, and even manga, plus she talks up her favorite site feature, the Recommendation Request tool—check it out!